The world’s my oyster
Tags:amsterdam london photos weekend excursionAmsterdam is definitely a gateway city: after only three months, I’m already addicted to traveling. One of the things I like most about studying here is its central location in Western Europe, and I made the best of it with a recent trip to London.
Ordinarily, I’m not a paranoid person, but I felt watched wherever I stepped foot in London. Visions of 1984 danced through my head during my first trip to the world’s foremost "surveillance society". I was slightly unnerved to see so many cameras, sometimes passing more than one per minute.
Despite the feeling of being inside the Big Brother house, London is a beautiful, big city brimming with life. Although well worth the visit, I barely scratched the surface during my 4-day stay. I particularly enjoyed and recommend the Tate Modern art museum and a trip to Greenwich. I snapped the following panorama from the Royal Observatory:
While I realize it’s terribly cliché to mention how expensive London is, I had no idea how much I would actually spend in four days. So much for a budget excursion! With the exchange rate at 2.10USD per GBP, a cheap London lunch (£5) would easily buy a nice dinner in the US. At least many of the museums are free and quite enjoyable.
Go forth to London with an open mind and a big wallet, but whatever you do don’t take a leak outside or pretend you’re Banksy — you might not make it back to mainland Europe!
October 31 is Halloween
Tags:amsterdam photosWe had a big party for Halloween at Café Uilenstede, which I wasn’t really expecting since it’s not a holiday here. As the rest of Amsterdam had a normal Wednesday, while we crazy international students celebrated Halloween in style! 60+ students all dressed up in costume and went to the crappy pub that’s about 500m from my dorm, in the middle of housing campus. I dressed up as "static cling" aka "static electricity" — all black with socks taped on me and my hair sprayed straight up. Bzzzzzz. It was sooo much fun! One comment: in the US, college girls dress up not just in costumes, but in sexy costumes on Halloween. Everyone here just wore non-scandalous costumes. Not quite doing it right, but it was amazing ;)
Hitchhiking to Paris
Tags:amsterdam hitchhiking paris photos weekend excursionMy half-Estonian friend Cat and I hitchhiked to Paris last weekend (27-28 October) as part of a competition with the international student group. About two dozen teams of one guy and one girl all hitchhiked from Amsterdam to Paris on Saturday, then we spent the night in a hostel, saw the city on Sunday, and bussed back to Amsterdam. We got back Monday morning!
I put the entire adventure on a Google Map so you can follow our journey: (You might have to scroll over to Europe.)
View Larger Map
Check out all my Paris photos online: http://picasaweb.google.com/derekraustin/HitchhikingToParis